Daily Archives: February 26, 2024

How Football Works: The triggers, traps and tempo of pressing

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“Even the best defences don’t press high all the time. Sometimes they hardly do it at all. Like a veteran boxer backing against the ropes, a lot of the best pressing sides spend long stretches of the game crouched in a mid-block, tightening ranks in midfield while they wait for the right opening to come out swinging. Players watch for a ‘trigger’, their cue to burst forward and catch the team in possession off guard. They may plan to spring a ‘trap’, luring the ball toward some designated area where the defence will snap shut on it, but the most important principle in pressing tactics is an underappreciated third T: tempo. …”
The Athletic

The Bayern Munich contradiction: Vast, invulnerable, deeply troubled and fixable

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“On Saturday night, at the end of a long week full of dark clouds, drizzle and reflection, Bayern Munich won for the first time in four games, beating RB Leipzig and ending their worst sequence since 2015. Bayern’s decision to announce that Thomas Tuchel will be leaving the club in the summer was intended to quieten the noise and liberate the players. But while the form has changed, the page is yet to turn. They won late at the Allianz Arena, with the second of two ruthlessly well-taken Harry Kane goals giving them a 2-1 win, but it was a bloodless game, full of inaccuracy and nerves, and played in front of an agitated crowd. …”
The Athletic

The first African diaspora

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Cabo Verde vs Ethiopia, January 2022.
“Football, at times, can be an emotional catalyst, and is capable of uniting the hearts of an entire population. Particularly, if this population is made up of barely a half a million people distributed over seven habitable islands of an archipelago nation. The islands of Cabo Verde sit a little bit more than 500 miles off the coast of Senegal in West Africa. Their independence, conquered after years of armed struggle in the forests of Guinea [Bissau], came in 1975. The leader of this liberation movement, called the PAIGC (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde), was Amílcar Cabral, one of the most important names of African liberation. …”
Africa Is a Country